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Hey - did you know if you click on the title of a thread it will take you to the first unread post since you last visited that thread?
but were afraid to ask: 
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smilie in place of the real @
Pretty Please - add it to our Events forum(s) and add to the calendar! >> 
not too dissimiliar from my motivations...
Inheriting Much More Than a Car
By DANA WHITE
Published: October 24, 2003
N automobile can be like any other heirloom, a Victorian brooch or the portrait of an obscure uncle, passed down through the generations as a symbol of clan continuity. In my case, the car is a 1965 Austin Healey 3000 Mark III convertible in British racing green. It sits in my sister's spotless garage in Los Angeles, rarely driven but highly prized, a six-cylinder reminder of all that survives in a family and all that doesn't.
Designed as a lower-priced alternative to the Jaguar, the Austin Healey 3000 is an MG on steroids, a curvy, low-slung, long-snouted number with a black vinyl interior, a beautiful dash veneered in burled walnut, and an oval chrome grille that resembles a maniacal grin. It joined our family in the mid-1960's when my father, Dan, a Navy pilot, was posted with the United States European Command near Paris. Whenever Dad was on leave we would jump in the Healey and explore the Continent: camping in Belgium, skiing in West Germany; the Netherlands for Queen Juliana's birthday.
My parents drove with the top down, even in the winter. Wedged into the hard, tiny back seat next to my older brother, Mark, I would steal frequent nervous glances at the speedometer needle as it trembled toward the triple digits and the road became a runway bordered by smeared trees. The wind whipped my hair with such force that the ends stung my cheeks. "The Healey sure makes point-to-point travel faster, what with no speed limits," Dad wrote in his 1965 Christmas letter to relatives back home. "On some freeways we can eat up many miles at 100 to 110 m.p.h."
On May 2, 1966, a week before our return to the United States, Dad got his dream car: a 1966 Porsche 912 coupe in the same deep green. Three days later he let Mom drive it while he attended a Navy function. On a country road she lost control and rolled the Porsche in a field of nettles. Dad, still in his dress whites, drove Mark and me to the accident scene. From a distance I could see Mom perched cross-legged on top of the car's dented roof, rigid with shock, her eyes locked to the horizon like a sailor scanning for icebergs. I was only 5, so the reason for our return to the States escaped me, but Mom knew and could see what was coming.
The Healey followed us to the States. But the Porsche was a total loss, and Dad had another one shipped to him in Florida, where we lived for two years while he flew reconnaissance missions over North Vietnam. In the spring of 1969, when he did not make it back from his second cruise, the three of us were left with little but his life insurance payouts and two sports cars the color of four-leaf clovers.
Mom was pregnant with my sister, Marda, at the time, and she loved to take the Healey out with the top down well into her ninth month. The wind in her hair took the edge off her grief. She adored that car. I preferred the Porsche — the seats were softer — and when Mom sold it a year later for a song, I was heartbroken.
Marda loved the Healey practically from birth. She would pretend to drive it while imitating the engine's distinctive gravelly purr. Later, after we moved to Colorado, she would sit on Mom's lap and steer the car around our long driveway. The Healey was prone to collapse, though Mark intrepidly drove it to high school. "It was not the most comfortable car," he recalled recently. "It was hot, it was noisy, and the back seat was useless. In the winter it slipped all over the place."
By the early 1980's Mark and I were out of the house, and Mom, who lived in Southern California by then, started taking Marda to Austin Healey meets, gatherings of like-minded enthusiasts. The meets were basically Mom's excuse to meet men, but Marda enjoyed seeing all the shiny cars. In 1980, when Marda was 11, they met a couple from Encino, Don and Gloria Fischer. Don, a professor at the School of Dentistry at the University of California at Los Angeles, owned a prize-winning 3000 that he had impeccably restored. And so the tall, kind man with the three Healeys became Marda's surrogate father, bonded by their love for a car.
In 1985, as Marda approached driving age, Don decided that the Healey was too unreliable for her. He proposed a project. Working in his garage, they disassembled the car down to its frame and, every weekend for a year, put it back together. Under Don's tutelage Marda rebuilt the engine, painted the body, and repaired the cracked dashboard with a new veneer, applying seven coats of varnish with painstaking care. Marda had never known her father, but she got to know his car down to the last bolt and screw, as if it were a puzzle that, when completed, would restore a piece of her past.
Mom signed the registration over to Marda on her 16th birthday, and she has had the car ever since. "I love the Healey because it was Dad's," she told me on the phone the other day. "Restoring it was important to me. Besides, it's a great car."
I replied: "But the seats were hard. It was drafty."
"The Healey is a driver's car," she explained patiently. "It likes to be driven hard. You always smell like the car when you're done driving it; like oil and gas and dirt."
Marda is 34 now, with two children. We live on opposite coasts, and whenever I visit her I make a point of looking in on the Healey. Mom died two years ago, but it is easy enough to picture her zooming around town, her belly so big it barely fit behind the wheel. I can see Dad, too, grinning broadly and relishing the next best thing to being in the cockpit. Marda may have the car, but I have the memories. I'm sure she would trade with me in a heartbeat, but I wouldn't. Remembering the car and the parents who owned it is enough.
And the Healey's next owner may be in the wings. My 3-year-old niece, Haley, loves to sit behind the wheel, pretending to steer. When Haley saw Marda back it out of the garage for the first time, she screamed, "Mommy, it works, it works!" Then she begged to go for a ride.
Inheriting Much More Than a Car
By DANA WHITE
Published: October 24, 2003
N automobile can be like any other heirloom, a Victorian brooch or the portrait of an obscure uncle, passed down through the generations as a symbol of clan continuity. In my case, the car is a 1965 Austin Healey 3000 Mark III convertible in British racing green. It sits in my sister's spotless garage in Los Angeles, rarely driven but highly prized, a six-cylinder reminder of all that survives in a family and all that doesn't.
Designed as a lower-priced alternative to the Jaguar, the Austin Healey 3000 is an MG on steroids, a curvy, low-slung, long-snouted number with a black vinyl interior, a beautiful dash veneered in burled walnut, and an oval chrome grille that resembles a maniacal grin. It joined our family in the mid-1960's when my father, Dan, a Navy pilot, was posted with the United States European Command near Paris. Whenever Dad was on leave we would jump in the Healey and explore the Continent: camping in Belgium, skiing in West Germany; the Netherlands for Queen Juliana's birthday.
My parents drove with the top down, even in the winter. Wedged into the hard, tiny back seat next to my older brother, Mark, I would steal frequent nervous glances at the speedometer needle as it trembled toward the triple digits and the road became a runway bordered by smeared trees. The wind whipped my hair with such force that the ends stung my cheeks. "The Healey sure makes point-to-point travel faster, what with no speed limits," Dad wrote in his 1965 Christmas letter to relatives back home. "On some freeways we can eat up many miles at 100 to 110 m.p.h."
On May 2, 1966, a week before our return to the United States, Dad got his dream car: a 1966 Porsche 912 coupe in the same deep green. Three days later he let Mom drive it while he attended a Navy function. On a country road she lost control and rolled the Porsche in a field of nettles. Dad, still in his dress whites, drove Mark and me to the accident scene. From a distance I could see Mom perched cross-legged on top of the car's dented roof, rigid with shock, her eyes locked to the horizon like a sailor scanning for icebergs. I was only 5, so the reason for our return to the States escaped me, but Mom knew and could see what was coming.
The Healey followed us to the States. But the Porsche was a total loss, and Dad had another one shipped to him in Florida, where we lived for two years while he flew reconnaissance missions over North Vietnam. In the spring of 1969, when he did not make it back from his second cruise, the three of us were left with little but his life insurance payouts and two sports cars the color of four-leaf clovers.
Mom was pregnant with my sister, Marda, at the time, and she loved to take the Healey out with the top down well into her ninth month. The wind in her hair took the edge off her grief. She adored that car. I preferred the Porsche — the seats were softer — and when Mom sold it a year later for a song, I was heartbroken.
Marda loved the Healey practically from birth. She would pretend to drive it while imitating the engine's distinctive gravelly purr. Later, after we moved to Colorado, she would sit on Mom's lap and steer the car around our long driveway. The Healey was prone to collapse, though Mark intrepidly drove it to high school. "It was not the most comfortable car," he recalled recently. "It was hot, it was noisy, and the back seat was useless. In the winter it slipped all over the place."
By the early 1980's Mark and I were out of the house, and Mom, who lived in Southern California by then, started taking Marda to Austin Healey meets, gatherings of like-minded enthusiasts. The meets were basically Mom's excuse to meet men, but Marda enjoyed seeing all the shiny cars. In 1980, when Marda was 11, they met a couple from Encino, Don and Gloria Fischer. Don, a professor at the School of Dentistry at the University of California at Los Angeles, owned a prize-winning 3000 that he had impeccably restored. And so the tall, kind man with the three Healeys became Marda's surrogate father, bonded by their love for a car.
In 1985, as Marda approached driving age, Don decided that the Healey was too unreliable for her. He proposed a project. Working in his garage, they disassembled the car down to its frame and, every weekend for a year, put it back together. Under Don's tutelage Marda rebuilt the engine, painted the body, and repaired the cracked dashboard with a new veneer, applying seven coats of varnish with painstaking care. Marda had never known her father, but she got to know his car down to the last bolt and screw, as if it were a puzzle that, when completed, would restore a piece of her past.
Mom signed the registration over to Marda on her 16th birthday, and she has had the car ever since. "I love the Healey because it was Dad's," she told me on the phone the other day. "Restoring it was important to me. Besides, it's a great car."
I replied: "But the seats were hard. It was drafty."
"The Healey is a driver's car," she explained patiently. "It likes to be driven hard. You always smell like the car when you're done driving it; like oil and gas and dirt."
Marda is 34 now, with two children. We live on opposite coasts, and whenever I visit her I make a point of looking in on the Healey. Mom died two years ago, but it is easy enough to picture her zooming around town, her belly so big it barely fit behind the wheel. I can see Dad, too, grinning broadly and relishing the next best thing to being in the cockpit. Marda may have the car, but I have the memories. I'm sure she would trade with me in a heartbeat, but I wouldn't. Remembering the car and the parents who owned it is enough.
And the Healey's next owner may be in the wings. My 3-year-old niece, Haley, loves to sit behind the wheel, pretending to steer. When Haley saw Marda back it out of the garage for the first time, she screamed, "Mommy, it works, it works!" Then she begged to go for a ride.
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